Genesis 6:5-6 The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
Depravity, as used in the Bible, means more than simply doing wrong. Rather it goes deeper. It means that we are so established in the wrong way of thinking and acting that we take pleasure in what we do wrong. There exists a type of inspiration in choosing to do wrong. It is a simplification of life. We stop needing to make excuses for what we do. We are without excuse anymore. We have become callously fixed in our nature to do wrong. The nature we have is the same as Satan.
Apart from God, the human heart is depraved. If our depravity is not recognized by us, it is either because we refuse to accept Jesus Christ’s remedy for our problem or we have been saved and cleansed by God’s mighty and gracious hand.
According to Jesus, these evil desires live deep within our moral fiber. If we trust his offer of healing and cleansing we will not experience what depravity is. But if we trust our own ignorant thinking we will remain enslaved and blinded to this reality of depravity.
We have been warned in Scripture of the extent of our human condition and this depraved state of sin in which we live. Whenever we choose to disregard Scripture’s teachings and God’s offer of salvation through faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice we confirm our condition. Blindly we allow ourselves to be led further from God.
